Exhibition Description

 

Ian Swanson
our shallow psychic death
June 4 – July 10, 2016

View images in this exhibition

Simone DeSousa Gallery is pleased to present our shallow psychic death, a solo exhibition of paintings and sculptures by Ian Swanson, including collaborations with artists Zack Benson (LA), Alex Bienstock (NYC), Wendy Ross (Detroit), Christopher Samuels (Detroit), and Adrian Tone (NYC).

Ian Swanson’s work spans painting, sculpture, audio and installation; working in territory where the slippage between representation and the ineffable brings figuration and abstraction into vivid conversation. The works here illicit a sense of depersonalization, a human image disappearing into surface, objects disobeying clarity. A thought space, elegantly damaged but unpretentious, obfuscated by puzzlement and rumination. There are delays and echoes, passages of time one needs to reflect upon and what surface they must scan to find entry. There is a latent humor, too dark to be easily recognizable.

Contemporary social conditions reward and admire a fluid cooperative identity, and subjective or unwavering personal beliefs are often equated with a sort of naive radicalism. At a time in which focus, visibility and speed dominate; Swanson betrays his contemporaries, bypasses gimmicky trends, and finds himself himself.

Ian Swanson was born in Detroit, growing up in the surrounding Metro area before attending Wayne State University, and subsequently receiving an MFA from Pratt Institute. Recent solo and collaborative exhibitions include /recent worksat Simone DeSousa Gallery, Detroit (2012); studios pretty much an office rn at Welcome Screen, London (2013); ego drift at WAKE, Detroit (2014); or or and at Free Paarking, St. Louis (2014); Vital Shift in Central Observer at Bosi, New York (2015); a native fear…a featureless protagonist at D’Agostino & Fiore, New York (2015), and feels like feels at Ashes/Ashes, Los Angeles (2016). He lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.